4 ms·
The best source for the development of C language is Bell Labs https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/chist.html https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/chist.html
by petilon 4y ago
The best source for the development of C language is Bell Labs https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/chist.html https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/chist.html
Excerpt:
By a general rule, in B the expression
*(V+i)
adds V and i, and refers to the i-th location after V.
Both BCPL and B each add special notation to sweeten such
array accesses; in B an equivalent expression is V[i]
C was designed to be as close to the machine as possible. Prior to C the only programming language for systems programming was assembly. If the compiler-generated code subtracted 1 from the index every time you indexed an array that would have been seen as not as efficient as assembly.